Reading Aloud

When I was in elementary school, my favorite part of the day was just after lunch when, either by official or unofficial agreement, all the teachers read aloud in their classrooms for ten or fifteen minutes. These were what my grandson calls “chapter books” as opposed to “picture books.” I remember hearing Charlotte’s Web, Black Beauty, Little House on the Prairie. I’m sure there were others, but they didn’t make as big an impression on me.

The magic of that read aloud time, sitting with the words washing over me and imagining the pictures in my head, remains with me still, and that’s one of the reasons I’m reading Harry Potter aloud to my grandson. Yes, I know. We’re in Arizona; he’s not, but telephones work and since we’re on the same cell phone network, there are no long distance charges. And my daughter holds me entirely responsible for the fact that earlier this week, when she and Colt were having a disagreement, he called her “a Dursley.” She knows enough about Harry Potter to know that wasn’t a good thing. (If you have no idea why being a Dursley is bad, let me urge you to read the Harry Potter books on your own. Read aloud or not, they’re fun for readers of all ages and you don’t need a grandchild as an excuse!)

A few weeks ago, while reading through a batch of e-mail, I found a note from a teacher at one of the charter schools here in Tucson. He’s evidently on the same page as the teachers at Greenway School once were, because he does the same thing–he reads to his class every day just after lunch. One of the books he chose to read is Desert Heat, the first Joanna Brady book. That’s the book in which, Joanna and Jenny, her nine-year old daughter, deal with the death of their husband and father respectively when Andrew Roy Brady is gunned down by a drug dealer’s hit-man.

Once they finished listening to the book, the kids in the class were asked to write a letter to one of the characters. The teacher took photos of some of the letters and sent them to me. Several wrote get well cards to Andy in his fictional hospital bed. One wrote to Joanna saying if she ever needed anyone to look after her dogs, she could call him. But one junior high school aged girl wrote a letter to Jenny, Joanna’s daughter, and that one took my breath away.

The student told Jenny she knew just how she felt because she, too, had lost her father when he was shot to death at the time she was ten years-old. She told Jenny that no matter how bad it was, someday it would be better. I had a tough time reading through the letter because it’s not easy to read when your eyes are full of tears and when your skin is covered with goosebumps.

So next Monday, the day before the tour starts, I’ll be paying an hour long visit to that school and that classroom. If I’m able to meet that young woman, I hope to tell her how much her letter meant to me.

Last week, at another event, a man sauntered up to the table and said, “I corresponded with your secretary a couple of years ago.” He went on to explain that he had written to object to a spelling error in one of my books. When he finished, I explained to him that he hadn’t corresponded with my secretary because I don’t HAVE a secretary. He had corresponded with me.

The story mentioned above is the real explanation of why I read my own fan mail. If I had someone sorting it for me, I might dodge some of the bad ones–including the guy complaining about the misspelling, but I also might miss out on some of the good ones. I’m not willing to do that.

PS: The Left for Dead tour starts in Tucson on February 7. The schedule is posted on my website: http://www.jajance.com/jajance.com/Schedule.html. The events in North Carolina are still pending at this point. Once they are finalized, they’ll be posted, too.